WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Federal Aviation Administration and the union representing air traffic controllers traded barbs ahead of what's expected to be contentious contract negotiations beginning next week.
FAA chief Marion Blakey and National Air Traffic Controllers Association President John Carr both said they hoped and expected that talks would go well, but there was no mistaking the animosity between the two sides during back-to-back news conferences Wednesday.
Blakey said controllers make far more money than other public servants, control scheduling and hold back modernization projects.
Carr retorted that the FAA is hostile to controllers, who are concerned about the system's safety and efficiency because of the agency's reluctance to deal with modernization problems.
The talks, which begin Monday, come at the end of a five-year contract that expired Sept. 30, 2003, but was extended for two years with minor changes.
A disagreement over a proposal to increase the number of privately run air traffic control towers in 2003 threatened to stall an aviation spending bill in Congress until a compromise was reached that shielded air traffic control jobs from privatization for a year.
Controllers also have said they are overworked because the FAA froze hiring while scores of controllers left. Most retired, a harbinger of the expected wave of retirements by the replacements for the 12,000 striking controllers President Reagan fired in 1981. The FAA has since announced a plan to replenish the ranks of controllers.
Blakey, at a news conference, said the FAA is hampered by costly work rules and side agreements.
''We can't afford an agreement like 1998 that saddled the FAA with excessive costs, archaic work rules and restrictions on our ability to modernize the system,'' Blakey said. She said controllers, who earn an average annual salary of $165,400, shouldn't be paid significantly more than commercial pilots, police officers or firefighters.
''I'm surprised she stooped so low so soon,'' Carr shot back on a conference call shortly afterward.
Carr said Blakey abandoned efforts to work with the union on productivity - efforts that offset half the cost of the contract from 1999-2001.
Carr acknowledged that the controllers' union has armed itself for the upcoming talks with several public relations firms.
''We will spend whatever it takes,'' he said.
For its part, the FAA recently hired Joseph Miniace, deputy assistant administrator for labor relations. He formerly headed the Pacific Maritime Association, which locked out West Coast dockworkers in 2002. When two armed guards protected Miniace during mediation session, union workers accused him of sabotaging the session with ''gun-toting security guards.''
Though the specter of the 1981 controllers' strike looms over the upcoming negotiations, both Carr and Blakey said they couldn't imagine a strike.
Still, Blakey said, ''No one has said that labor negotiations are going to be easy.''
